When the United States Auto Club was founded in 1956 by Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Tony Hulman — stepping in after the American Automobile Association withdrew from motor racing following the 1955 season — it assumed control of national championship car racing, including events on dirt oval tracks. For the first decade and a half of USAC's existence, dirt racing sat within the broader National Championship alongside paved-track events.
In 1971, USAC separated all dirt track races from the National Championship, creating an independent dirt division. From 1971 to 1980 this stood as the National Dirt Car Championship. In 1981 the series was renamed the Silver Crown Series, a title it has carried ever since. The Silver Crown name reflected the prestige accorded to the class, whose heavier and more powerful cars required significant team resources and driver experience compared to midgets and sprint cars.
Silver Crown cars are the largest and heaviest in the USAC triple crown, running big-block engines on tracks that range from short dirt ovals to longer mile-plus paved venues, including the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's infield oval for special events. The greater size and longer races associated with Silver Crown events place different demands on drivers than the shorter sprint car and midget programmes, rewarding endurance, tyre management, and strategic racecraft alongside outright speed.
Events typically run longer distances than USAC sprint car or midget features, and the combination of dirt and pavement rounds across the calendar means teams and drivers must adapt their setups and driving styles throughout the season. Points are accumulated across all Silver Crown events, with the champion determined at season's end.
Winning the Silver Crown championship alongside the USAC National Sprint Car and National Midget titles constitutes the USAC triple crown, the highest individual achievement in USAC competition. Only Tony Stewart in 1995 and J. J. Yeley in 2003 have completed the triple crown in a single season. Other drivers — Pancho Carter, Dave Darland, Jerry Coons Jr., Tracy Hines, Chris Windom, and Logan Seavey — have each won all three championships at least once across multiple seasons. In 2012, car owners Mike Curb and Cary Agajanian became the only team owners to win all three championships in a single year.
The Silver Crown Series has historically attracted some of the most experienced and versatile drivers in American oval racing. The championship is not typically a stepping stone to other categories but rather a destination for drivers who have mastered the full range of USAC competition and who seek the challenge of the largest cars on the longest tracks in the USAC portfolio.
Bryan Clauson, one of the most complete USAC competitors of the modern era, was prominent across all three national series before his death in 2016. Dave Darland, from Kokomo, Indiana, and Tracy Hines of New Castle, Indiana, both accumulated Silver Crown wins across careers that spanned multiple decades, exemplifying the series' role as a long-term home for dedicated USAC racers.
The Silver Crown Series stands as the apex class within the USAC national framework in terms of car size and track length, while the sprint car and midget series address different ends of the performance and venue spectrum. Together, the three series give USAC a coherent national identity built around open-wheel oval racing, spanning the full range from nimble midgets on quarter-mile dirt ovals to Silver Crown cars on mile-long tracks. The series continues to run as an active USAC championship, maintaining the tradition of big-car dirt and pavement racing that has been part of the American racing calendar since the early decades of the sport.